An announcement about the comment section
blogs.sciencemag.org
blogs.sciencemag.org
The problem, IMHO, is commenters seem to have become too entitled and forgot that comment sections are inherently "my house, my rules" spaces. It's a bit like shirts: yes you can take yours off, but not in my store. For the most part people are fine with that, and those who are not are seen as petulant and escorted out.
I don't see the problem with bloggers purging their comment sections of even mildly off-topic banter; and they're certainly well justified to kick out trolls.
Why would people want to pollute their own site with seemingly random one-line comments on stories entirely unrelated to the rest of their own site, that nobody wants to read out of context?
How are people going to upvote comments so I can read the best ones first?
How will this system prevent it from turning into 99.99% spam comments on everything?
The idea of decentralized commenting is great, but in practice it seems to fall apart completely.
Human communication, whether digital or analog, is a continuum. You could have a discussion via snail mail letters, online mailing lists, letters published in a paper, blogs who publish as if corresponding through letters, pamphlets and manifests, digital forums are a lot like message walls where people tack on strings of post-its, sites such as HN or Reddit are ultimately aggregators of links - numeric identifiers - turning them in catalogues of sort of content elsewhere,... and then there's the myriad of news sites churning out a continuous stream of succinct missives about any topic under the sun like a ticker tape, or a news strip.
There's two aspects to comments.
There's the technical aspect of a HTML form, processing submissions, compiling a list of submissions, and then integrating those as an assembly into a larger context: below an blog post, an article, a link, a video, a piece of audio,...
There's the content, published information, itself. That is, the origin item as first put out there by an original publisher, and then the ensuing flurry of opinions, additions, corrections, jokes, nonsense, unsolicited self promotions, and so on.
The complex interaction between those aspects, medium and message, has been the subject of fields such as communication theory and media studies. Most famously by Marshall McLuhan.
The convenience of having a way to express semi-anonymized opinions in the digital world at every turn and corner is, paradoxically, a boon and a curse at the same time. the affordances of combining and re-combining digital technologies to provide (new) modes of interaction between audience and the stage, tends to be at odds with what actually happens on the stage, what is being said in the fray and how it is being said.
The biggest pitfall in a discussion like this is losing sight of this intangible, abstract complexity, while reducing the modalities to plain technicalities and sterile theorizing over network models and effects.
Your questions may be relevant and important to you, but they they only carry value in the eye of the beholder. It's perfectly valid to promote as well as disparage the upvote/downvote system because of it's perceived advantages and disadvantages. It's also perfectly valid to completely do away with comments entirely as one might feel that they add little value to their outlet and tend to become a burden to moderate / manage.
(Tangentially, this is also why I take an interest in the Smol Web movement which tends to focus on self-publishing and content proper: https://thedorkweb.substack.com/p/gopher-gemini-and-the-smol...)
At the end of the day, there's a shared responsibility and it is not merely limited to the implementation of a particular policy or technology, but rather on a moral level: how each of us chooses to approach and treat others and what they bring to the table. And that's what really matters in all of this.
Moderation is an intrinsic part of governing a community of people. Which is an incredibly hard feat to accomplish by any measure. Being mindful about the drivers and motives that underpin online governance helps understand the decision making process that leads to preferring one way of doing things over another.
Ed25519 is a public key (usually signature) system, not a hash function. You're probably thinking of either a ed25519 signature, or a (for example) sha512 hash.
Sloppy terminology. Apologies.
For example, here's the 64-bit signature for the comment above:
e3b2b607891e364b0c80df9fe926a5aed125d8f4a0f2f4c58b58b87b92884e634bb614f13cad372f074158c035eb382535b6d33d9ba10d7d59843a17dee5720e
Here's the 32-bit public key:
bf9fae774061bb6f5deea9380ccdf11263071bc256c1bd0947572f0a3dcc3806
The blog author could allow commenters to publish their keys and signatures. If the author later publishes their comment, the reader can verify 1. it has not been edited (a hash would also suffice for this) and 2. it was signed with the commenter's published key (presumably by the commenter).
Sloppy terminology. Apologies.
For example, here's the 64-bit signature for the comment above:
e3b2b607891e364b0c80df9fe926a5aed125d8f4a0f2f4c58b58b87b92884e634bb614f13cad372f074158c035eb382535b6d33d9ba10d7d59843a17dee5720e
Here's the 32-bit public key:
bf9fae774061bb6f5deea9380ccdf11263071bc256c1bd0947572f0a3dcc3806
The blog author could allow commenters to publish their keys and signatures. If the author later publishes their comment, the reader can verify 1. it has not been edited (a hash would also suffice for this) and 2. it was signed by the commenter's published key.
Getting real "a miracle occurs"[0] vibes here.
That aside, it doesn't seem like stomping on anything to say "I want productive conversations only and it's my property so I decide what is productive"
The idea that anyone should be able to say whatever they want on someone else's always seemed extremely entitled to me.
The idea that no one should say anything except on their own site seems to be an extreme limitation on free expression.
As for the real issue the article talks about, most misinformation comes from people bringing up things that nobody asked about. Nobody asked if the world is flat, nobody asked about vaccines. Nobody asks about race, but online video game lobbies are always harping on the issue.
How do you filter out people who are clever enough trolls to game algorithmic filters?
How does that work?
Everyone's own blog post is a bit too decentralized, there isn't really a discussion. Comment filtering would be nice, but hard to implement, especially with context.
Digg/reddit-based sites have their own community and (tbh) echo-chamber. So people form interesting discussions and respectful disagreements, instead of "hot takes" and flame wars.
Heck, if the trolls want they can create their own site, where they bash random articles. But nobody else has to pay attention to their awful comments.
He doesn't do it to make any money. He says that the small fee entirely eliminated trolls, and almost entirely eliminated people who join for week 1 and never return.
Show me a thing that has not been defiled by opening it wide to the horror that is the average intelligence. Twitter and Facebook is a dumpster fire, ultimately destroying political discourse and locking almost half of the population in a dangerous alternate reality. They now turned violent and will continue to do so.
Masses of hodlers are now destabilizing markets with their GME raids and crypto.
Etc...
Not to criticize that possible solution, as I also agree with it in principle, but it is probably much harder to implement well than it looks, and should be created from scratch with scalability in mind: micropayments per post probably are the best option, which if applied to email too would eliminate spam in seconds, although that would also sound like admitting the defeat of the Internet as we knew it.
I mean, I totally understand where you're coming from because it is very different from the current model where almost everything is free.
But at the end of the day if you're not willing to pay $100/month (which is less than many people pay for cable TV!) then maybe you don't really want to comment on that 100 blogs all that much
So I was pleasantly surprised that it's just moderation.
I know it's a completely different field, but I moderate a fairly large mountain biking forum, and I often have to remove comments that recommend techniques that could result in injury or death. It's often new riders who find that Technique B works better for them than Technique A, but they don't have the experience to understand why Technique B is dangerous.
I can't imagine how much worse it must be in Dr. Lowe's field.
We shouldn't pretend poisons don't exist, we should label them with warnings.
We also shouldn't put them in the fridge next to the bottle of coke no matter how well labeled.
That's a great analogy, Perhaps to extend it -- there could be a "discards" section where the comment gets moved to should it be warranted, along with a note on why.
Better removed than unlabeled, as nice as a label might be.
It's like bureaucracy for moderation.
There should be a specific thread about poison
I eventually switched to registration-required, but in a way that no one noticed. But the other feature I added was flagging particular conversations as requiring a higher privilege level to post. Regular contributors can request a privilege upgrade to participate. This has helped.
The Canadian Broadcasting Company: https://cbc.ca
While it's a TV station, and a set of radio stations, they also provide a news website.
> up here
That would be Canada. Like Americans, many of us assume we're talking to Americans when writing online.
I think it would be better if this post included some guidelines about what constitutes acceptable vs. unacceptable content. I don't doubt that he is dealing with a lot of trolls/non-scientific nonsense, and I understand that he is well within his rights to delete anything he wants, but "whatever I feel are tendentious comments meant to keep the coronavirus arguments going" comes across as a bit too subjective for my tastes and would undermine my confidence in a forum.
Note I don't participate in the comments on that site, so this doesn't impact me personally at all. I just feel like if you need to implement censorship, you should try to keep it as objective as possible.
Further, objectivity is impossible in moderation. There are no shortcuts, some judgment is always required or your "objective" rules will be gamed to death. Acknowledging the subjectivity is exactly the right approach.
I think this is the future of "forums" as well. Moderation depends on trust, so we'll be more explicit about who we're trusting, and just roll with it. Best case we get multiple moderation perspectives on a decentralized discussion mechanism. But if we just get used to the idea that forums are shaped by the personalities of their moderators, that's probably an improvement.
This is a fairly nihilistic take. Lots of people do things for greater purpose than "personal pleasure". I don't know if this particular blogger cares about earning peoples' confidence or not - but I do think it's something that many bloggers/moderators care deeply about.
> Further, objectivity is impossible in moderation.
Absolute objectivity may be an impossible ideal, but I don't think that means we should completely give up on objectivity. Look at the US legal system - which aims to bring as much fairness and objectivity as possible to the extremely subjective process of criminal justice. A written code of laws, trial by peers, appeals system, etc. It's very far from ideal, and yet worlds better than if we just gave up completely and said "objectivity is impossible", and let the judge issue whatever verdict and sentence at whim. We see analogs of these checks and balances on popular forums, such as upvotes/downvotes (trial by peers) and community guidelines (written code of laws).
To be clear I am not suggesting every blogger should go and try to replicate all of the checks and balances of the US legal system to moderate their blogs. But I do think that something as simple as posting a set of guidelines, and referring back to them regularly when people step out of line, can be a good way to set the tone for a community. Something similar to the HN guidelines, which I think are pretty good [1].
I'm also not implying that Derek Lowe is by any means obligated to write out a set of guidelines for my or anyone else's benefit. Just sharing my opinion of what could have made this a more informative blog post - for anyone who cares to read (and of course disagree).
Normal people get irritated at them, lose their patience and tell them to fuck off and trolls love using civility as a club in return.
When ape cultures grow to large, eventually there is a dispute and you get a tribal split. Some of the tribe sticks with the original leader, some move to the new tribe. Researchers have found that this is related to neocortex size, and that if you take human's neocortex size you would reach tribes of 150.
Article comment sections are tribes. If those tribes get to be beyond 150, you reach natural tribal splits, but with no way to actually split. Hacker News comment sections are a tribe. Sub-reddits are tribes.
We're all fighting Dunbar's Number. We're all going against the grain. Incivility is guaranteed. Other than going to a smaller website or creating another sub-reddit, I do not know of a single community that actually takes Dunbar into account.
And even if such a comment website was created, then we get the opposite problem. If we segregate everyone to their own perfect 150 person tribes, then we get bubbles! We get the antivax tribe feeding their own biases with no checks.
So not only do you need tribes, but you need to find "model tribes" that the other tribes can look up to. So you need tribal networks as you wouldn't want to centrally control that.
It might be a good idea, that when speaking outside of your tribe, you are communicating not as yourself but for your tribe. So people don't see allochthon talking, they see Hacker News talking. If your tribe did not back the comment, they could decide to hide it themselves. If you don't agree with that, that might incite a tribal split. If other tribes decided they didn't like that comment, they would down-vote your entire tribe.
Being part of an elite tribe might be a signal of social status in much the same way that historic Venice Coffee houses and the conversations and inspiration that came from then led the Art world. And as each tribe is small, each person within the tribe is personally accountable.
So when Derek Lowe, or Hacker News, or Reddit or YouTube for that matter delete a comment, ban someone, or any other such action they're not censoring, they are ENGAGING in Free Speech. People are free to put out their own soap boxes and argue their cases before the public should they wish. But they don't have a right to other people's private property nor to an audience, and in fact that would be completely contrary to freedom. The point of Free Speech is as a system to hopefully edge closer to truth and react to changing evidence, circumstances and societal shifts by keeping arguments and reactions within the realms of social, economic, and political consequences. Not force.
>but I don’t like it on principle, either.
He has nothing to apologize for. Banning people and deleting comments from his own soap box is itself part of the essence of Freedom of Speech. Everyone may react, and he can react to their reactions, and so on and so forth in a never ending dynamic system, all secure in that nobody may ever legally put a permanent end to the debate with violence. Yet for some reason a lot of otherwise very smart people have allowed a certain class of parasites, misanthropes, malicious/opportunistic authoritarians, and the lazy to make them feel bad about exercising their speech rights and even try to turn that back around on them.
What's truly been worrying is to see that leak into the mainstream Republican Party, one of the two big American coalitions. The blatancy of the anti-Free Speech laws they're now passing at the state level is fairly horrifying.
EDIT: In an interesting bit of timing, arguments were just made in NetChoice v. Moody regarding a preliminary injunction against the recent Florida law attempting to state regulate speech in networked spaces (unless you own a theme park). A number of different lawyers live followed it on twitter if anyone is interested [0, 1 amongst others]. Directly relevant to this discussion though.
EDIT 2: FWIW courts have faced these cases before, and for anyone interested in reading more on the legal side of things, a term to get you started in searches for court cases is "editorial discretion" and the exercise thereof, which were frequently fought in the realm of newspapers. An example covering some of this would be Wisconsin Association of Nursing Homes, Inc. v. Journal Co. (1979). Editorial discretion is a core function of speech, since often choosing what not to say is at least as important as what to say.
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0: https://twitter.com/AriCohn/status/1409563991974817800
1: https://twitter.com/questauthority/status/140956275829159936...
At any rate, I won't edit that out, but it wasn't the best choice of words. If this was a paper, it wouldn't have made the second draft after I re-read it the next morning :).
I think it could be beneficial to society if forums of a certain audience size and nature might be compelled to provide some limited access to everyone. In the case of newspapers, for example, if they were able to charge a fee for access to cover their costs, bury it on the very last page with a clear disclaimer that it is not their opinion, and even publish their own rebuttal as desired - I don't see this as abridging the newspaper's right to free speech. And I think it could potentially expose people to a more diverse set of opinions than they might otherwise get without such an access mandate.
Edit: Adding this other source for some more deep details https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.01119
> To the people who have been abusing the system: you are of course free to have your own opinions, and you are free to express them on your own site or anywhere else that will have you, but this is a warning notice. Do what you like but don’t do it here. You are free to contribute your thoughts on other topics if you honestly have something to add or some question to ask, but any sign of attempted pandemic flaming will be deleted as quickly as I see it. Go away and tell everyone that Big Pharma muzzled you, if that makes you feel better. But in the end, you’re already going to be the last people standing after the vaccines wipe the rest of us out, right? Isn’t that enough?
I think that's the proper take. No one's denying anyone's right to express their opinion. They're just not providing a platform for factually incorrect ones.
Also - aren’t we in the comments section of a news site right now? Are you suggesting that HN should disable comments?
That's a bit long, maybe an acronym would work better: MCDNADFATSEEPTII.
I mean, subjectively I would say that HN is a much better community than most news sites - but I'm clearly biased here and I'm sure there are many people who would disagree with me that the HN comments section holds any value.
How do you feel about a site like Ars Technica, which is an originator of news and also has a very active forum and comments section? I personally disagree with a lot of the comments (and perhaps more importantly, the style of commenting) on that site and regret it almost every time I browse into the comments, but I wouldn't say it is Ars' best interest to shut the comments down. I think they probably get a lot additional ad impressions, premium subscribers, etc. from people who interact with the comments.
And if it's just a difference in the quality of the comments - is the correct course of action for news sites to disable comments, or work to improve them through moderation, UX, etc?
Not trying to be nit-picky here btw, I genuinely did not understand the basis for the parent's comment that "If news sites know what's good for them, they should be disabling the comments section asap".
As a technologist it seems like we want a high-tech solution (and I'm surprised that AI-driven moderation isn't mentioned more in the discussion; it seems to me you could accomplish a lot with sentiment analysis plus other heuristics like account age and activity). But another thought is to treat trolling itself as a disease to be modeled as a diffusion process, infecting previously good actors and tempting them into trolling behavior themselves. Its remarkable how fragile communities are in the face of even one or two determined malefactors! The OP's sensible approach feels like a kind of vaccination itself, in that it should slow the rate of reinfection such that while it won't eliminate trolling entirely, it will keep the inevitable outbreaks small and localized and not self-sustaining.
But, sheesh, what a PITA. Is anyone working on automating the distracting/annoying/frustrating task of internet forum moderation?
In The Pipeline is not his employment.
I found this interesting for a few other reasons as well. It's a pretty solid data point that discourse around Covid is worse than around other scientific topics. Also, there are suggestions that a small number of people are purposefully stirring up shit (the fact that they didn't take hints that their mode of discourse was not welcome). I'm sure the same dynamic is at play on HN as well.
Ultimately, we have to come up with strategies to deal with this. I'm hopeful that Derek's approach will work for his small (but excellent) corner of the Internet.
Hey dang, you mind explaining this?
It's not totally clear about how this works. It looks like I've been shadowbanned from making new posts at least temporarily, since when I tried to make a new post yesterday I was met with this error despite making no posts yesterday.
I am not sure what the goal is. I already hit 500 so I've got the downvote, but maybe there's more rights and privileges that they want to keep me from obtaining with a higher upvote count?
Case in point: Dead or Alive 6 vs 5, or Guilty Gear Strive vs Xrd. Apparently "Sony" is the big bad and is forcing developers to cover up more female characters or something. I honestly don't care but... really, this sort of thing is coming up these days. (Actually, the newest costume change was Pyra & Mythra's costumes in Super Smash Bros Ultimate, now that I think of it).
Its gotten ridiculous, and I can't trust the face of these "censorship" complaints very much anymore. Its like "Censorship" is used as a complain for anything and everything these days.
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I think there can be a discussion about the appropriate amount of sexuality / sexiness in video game characters (especially the female characters). But as soon as the "censorship" trolls enter the discussion, its all over. Its just trolls all the way down, and the discussion dies.
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Anyway, I realize this is completely tangential to the discussion on this particular science blog. But I'm more of a video gamer, so I'm seeing more and more of this "censorship" talk around video game sites.
They have the right to do it, I understand it, and I might do the same in their place, because who wants a twitterstorm against their new product? But it's still annoying.
The DOA6 example is almost entirely a case where Koei Tecmo wanted to be taken "more seriously" as an eSports game.
Now maybe you can argue that "eSports players don't play Dead or Alive", and only "casual players looking for sexiness play Dead or Alive". But... I know that's not true either. Some of my friends who were into fighting games were "serious" about their Dead or Alive combos / practice regiments / matchups / etc. etc. There are plenty of serious players in that group.
On the one hand: you got the "casuals" who pay $1000 for hundreds of costumes (Dead or Alive 5 was very famous for its DLC costumes). "eSports" players didn't do this, because they were more focused on the combo practice rather than playing dress-up with these characters. (In contrast, the players who did find the characters sexy, probably did play "dress up" more often and were into buying these costume packs).
Frankly: its not a clear cut case. I could very well see Koei Tecmo wanting to appeal to the eSports players, hoping that it'd propel their game to newer heights in the "serious" eSports ring (ex: Marvel vs Capcom 3 / Street Fighter 4). Furthermore, the "casual" audience argued that they deserved more influence than the eSport ambitions BECAUSE they spent all of this money on DLC costumes with no in-game effect aside from "playing dress up".
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In contrast, Bandai's "Soul Calibur" series never really had this issue. Soul Calibur can remain "sexy costume / dressup" for casuals, because Bandai's "serious" esports game was Tekken. (And while Soul Calibur's "serious" players definitely held side tournaments, they were always seen as 2nd class citizens compared to Tekken at the eSports events).
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Nintendo's "Smash Ultimate" example is kinda funny, because its clear that Nintendo doesn't really want Smash Ultimate to be an eSports title (despite it taking up a big eSports following). Nintendo's eSports ambitions are Pokken Tournament (Pokemon fighting game) and Splatoon.
Despite not wanting to be an eSports title, Nintendo clearly is aiming the game at younger audiences, so various characters are a bit more covered up in Smash Ultimate (ex: Bayonetta, Pyra, etc. etc.)
Believe or not, whatever we (people, collectively) decide to allow or disallow is very likely going to profoundly affect shape of freedom of expression for future generations.
If a developer (lets say, Koei Tecmo games), decides to make a video game (such as Dead or Alive 6) slightly less sexy than a previous video game (such as Dead or Alive 5), is that "censorship" ??
Or is this a *COMPLETELY DIFFERENT* discussion, and the "censorship" trolls are just trying to cause outrage in a completely unrelated subject matter?
Ditto with Nintendo and their treatment of Pyra & Mythra in Xenogears vs Smash Ultimate. Its like Smash Ultimate is aimed at a younger audience, so Nintendo wanted those characters to have slightly less sex appeal in Smash Ultimate, while having slightly more sex appeal in Xenogears.
So yelling "censorship" at the top of your lungs because you don't like Pyra's tights in Smash Ultimate is just... counterproductive. (For those unaware: The original character design doesn't have tights, so she shows a bit more thigh in Xenogears. So the controversy is whether or not adding the tights to Smash Ultimate is "censorship").
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That's the thing about "censorship". Its outrage trolling these days. You yell censorship not to make a point or to move the discussion forward. You yell it to close off the discussion and derail it. Its a troll move, not really about discussing underlying issues.
If you decide not to say something, this is not impinging on your freedom of speech, it is you using your freedom to make that decision. Some people call this self-censorship which I do not count as censorship.
When I decide not to talk politics at the office or at home party that might be self-censorship but in reality is my own choice.
Yes, censoring trolls that say vaccines are harmful is still censorship, regardless of how sure you feel about being right.
Understand that any idea had to start at some point with a single person or small number of people. Women demanding their right to vote, it had to start somewhere. It also means everybody else was of another opinion.
Suppressing speech, beliefs, just because you don't agree with them risks to cut those movements before they have ability to gain traction and in effect slow human progress.
Have others been allowed to state that position? Has some body tried to suppress that speech? If yes, then they (but not you) have been subject to censorship.
A chilling effect.
It started as a legal concept but it applies to censorship as well. It's sufficient to count as censorship if you simply punish legal speech sufficiently that the populace self-censors.
[1]: https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/897/chilling-effect
So if whenever someone expresses a certain opinion, they received mass amounts of threats against their personal well being, by non-government actors, you would not say that this speech has been chilled/censored?
Are you aware of the concept of how certain actions (such as mass threats) can have a chilling effect on speech?
Anything other than threats of violence is someone else's free speech.
But.... These types of things also cause a chilling effect on other people's speech right?
Do you understand how it is possible to stop large amounts of people from engaging in speech, if non-government actors make threats against their well being?
Do you understand this concept of how censorship can be done by chilling speech through the process of violent threats, even by non-government actors?
> because of the consequences
What if those consequences are violent threats (or even attacks!), by non-government actors, on you and your family?
You really would not call that censorship, if no-one was willing to engage in certain speech, due to these violent threats by non-government actors?
Extremely famous people have changed the world through their speech and died for it. They should not have died but they were also explicitly not censored.
You're just arguing over the meaning of words. I agree with you that threats of violence over speech is awful. And thankfully it is against the law, as it should be.
But that's also the most extreme -- we're mostly arguing about people who don't feel like they should have to answer for their speech rather than being violently threatened.
That a weird definition of censorship.
Imagine if someone were to say "You aren't being censored. The government is just threatened to kill you, for your speech, after you say it. You can say whatever you want, and it won't be stopped. You will just suffer consequences (such as when the government kills you), afterwords for your speech. Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences!"
I think that basically everyone would call the situation that I just described, as censorship.
The situation of government death squads, killing people for their speech, is probably the most clear example of censorship that I could think of, even if they do it, after the fact.
I am not sure what could possibly even qualify as censorship, if the example I gave doesn't count.
So I am not sure why you are basically saying that violent threats, that discourage speech, are not an example of censorship.
Is it in all releases or just the US and European releases? I remember people complaining that just the Western releases of some games were censored.
edit: I'm rate limited, responding here:
I just pointed out that versions don't have to be the same to play online. I remember people complaining that the releases were different, so I'm just asking.
Sure, a dedicated fan can do that. But when you consider the outrage is from typical people (who do not have the technical skill to implement these mods), then it makes more sense.
https://nichegamer.com/2018/10/27/new-sony-censorship-policy...
[0] https://kotaku.com/xenoblade-chronicles-xs-director-on-local...
Not to mention that Japanese creators often don't know much about a problem other than what the company tells them. If Nintendo tells them "we need to do this or people in the West won't buy it," the creator will believe them, and say that they don't mind the censorship because it's necessary, even if Nintendo is lying through their teeth when they say that.
There is a case to be made that in a world where creators sell their content globally, conservative regions with a lot of potential customers might influence content that ends up also being sold in liberal regions. This might not be censorship, exactly, but it is an annoying side-effect of a globalized information economy. Instead of the world opening up and becoming more liberal, it might actually end up becoming more conservative, if transnational corporations decide that catering to the lowest common denominator is a more profitable route.
I suppose the workaround for consumers is the same as it is for movies - to avoid the content designed to appeal to the broadest audience, and seek out indie creators who are still willing to cater to a more local or specialized audience. In the mean time, I do think it's fair for consumers to advocate for generally more liberal themes in games, although I'm not sure the sexiness of an outfit is really the hill to die on.
I never played it, so I might be wrong, but isn't that why people play DOA in the first place? To see sexy women? So how's that trolling?
There's a fair number of players who were hoping that DOA would become an esport: akin to Marvel vs Capcom 3, Street Fighter 4, or Smash Ultimate.
There's a discussion that must be had about DOA's excessive "sexiness" and whether or not that is hurting it from becoming a mainstream esports game. DOA 6 focused on the "cinematography", which caused an outrage because their fans wanted more emphasis on the sex-appeal (which was absolutely the focus of DOA2 through DOA5: "boob physics" was front and center in a lot of marketing)
Now don't get me wrong, the discussion should be had. But... this isn't about censorship at all. This discussion ultimately comes down to the skirt length and bust size of Kasumi / Marie Rose (and other characters). To derail the discussion by yelling "censorship" is unnecessary, and unhelpful hyperbole.
The difference is consent. A person is free to objectify themselves and doing so can be empowering. A person should be extremely cautious about creating fiction to objectify a group of people to which the author does not belong as this can be exploitative and have societal repercussions.
I know next to nothing about the developers for the DOA franchise, but I am guessing there would be less controversy if the studio had a larger female presence.
Is Dwarf Fortress an immoral game, because the authors are not a part of groups like dwarfs, elves and goblins? And some in-game events may occur without the consent of those characters?
edit: Got rate limited for some reason and can no longer respond, so I'm just going to edit this post:
What does the "consent from the group" even mean? Do you have to make a poll, write to the CEO of Women™ or something? Seriously. Can I even include women if I'm making an amateur video game as a one-man effort (no pun intended), and I myself am not a woman?
And for dragontamer, I guess you got your answer. I don't personally care about video games at all, but some people believe this is immoral and rape-like (no consent), so it's not surprising to me that someone calls it censorship and points out the parallels to back when people tried to censor violence in video games and whatnot.
edit2:
> You are free to make whatever game you want. The public is free to respond to your game however they want. You aren't going to get many complaints if you "even include women". If you objectify those women, you might get met with those complaints. If you were a women objectify women, you can at least claim that your are taking control of the objectification. That is viewed as a valid excuse by a lot of people much like how I mentioned people in a minority group are generally allowed to make jokes at that groups expense.
So I should take it as roughly "the consent from the group means that the group isn't going to cancel you"? But if that's the case then why is it called "consent"? Isn't the entire point of consent to ask before you take action? It's like saying "I'm going to force you to have sex with me, if you don't go to the police then it means you consented to it". And from my understanding that's literally what rape culture is.
You are free to make whatever game you want. The public is free to respond to your game however they want. You aren't going to get many complaints if you "even include women". If you objectify those women, you might get met with those complaints. If you were a women objectify women, you can at least claim that your are taking control of the objectification. That is viewed as a valid excuse by a lot of people much like how I mentioned people in a minority group are generally allowed to make jokes at that groups expense.
The "controversy" of note is the group who are threatening boycotts unless more sexy costumes are added to Dead or Alive 6. They do this because they think that Sony is censoring the Dead or Alive 6 series (and other games). I'm grossly simplifying things here but... that's the gist.
This discussion of objectification and/or consent is... simply not a thing in the Dead or Alive discussions I'm aware of. I mean, that discussion is going on, but that's more "Hot Tub Meta" and "ASMR / Ear Licking" streams, and kinda different.
Is a grown woman allowed to dress up in a skimpy two piece bathing suit and then stream herself playing video games on Twitch? Even when consent is 100% clear (no one is forcing this streamer to do this. They want to partake in the hot tub meta), a large group of people decry the "objectification".
So to answer your general question:
> I know next to nothing about the developers for the DOA franchise, but I am guessing there would be less controversy if the studio had a larger female presence.
You're 100% wrong about this. There are plenty of examples inside of the video game community where adult women with 100% consent and 100% control over their creative abilities choose to be sexy, but this sexiness invites controversy.
Its definitely not about consent. Its not about worker treatment. The discussion is clearly about how much sexiness should be in video games (and surrounding media: such as "streamers" on Twitch).
You are right that I am not up on the current DOA controversy. I simply know the controversy that has existed around that franchise since basically its inception. That plus the other commenter's comparison to sex work led me to believe the complaints were coming from the other side of the issue. I'm apparently wrong on that, but either way we are still talking about the same issue. People in the past have complained that the game objectified women. The developers have tried to distance themselves from that and now the fans are crying censorship. There is still the same issue at the heart of it, just which side is complaining the loudest has flipped.
>You're 100% wrong about this. There are plenty of examples inside of the video game community where adult women with 100% consent and 100% control over their creative abilities choose to be sexy, but this sexiness invites controversy.
I didn't say there would be zero controversy, but there is definitely less controversy when someone objectifies a group of which they belong. That isn't limited to video games. That is true of basically all modern western culture.
Consent certainly isn't the issue here. This is 100% a "Sexiness" issue. DOA is a "sexy" game, including breast physics and precise measurements of "bounciness" in skimpy costumes.
The discussion the DOA community needs is about how such "sex appeal" is relatively niche, and is a "turnoff" to some gamers. DOA6, which was striving for esports / mainstream acceptance is finding itself between a rock and a hard place.
DOA has a history of being "that sexy game", which people don't want to associate with in public. On the other hand, to make a change in the marketing is somewhat of a betrayal to the fans who have supported DOA over the past few decades.
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The underlying issue gets ignored because of 'censorship' worries. A game that markets itself with this kind of sexiness front-and-center cannot really become mainstream. Its too perverted for people to want to associate with in public.
It reminds me how Harvey Weinstein used to demand that women shoot nude scenes in his movies. Many women agreed to shoot those scenes in an attempt to help their career. That might technically be consent, but the power imbalance in the situation makes it at least partially coerced consent. I'm not saying the people developing DOA are monsters on the order of Weinstein, but the women who have their breast measured are in a similar compromised position.
It is just like someone running a sweatshop might be able to hire people for a couple dollars per day. The workers would be consenting to work at that price, but they are being coerced into it due to their own financial situation.
TLDR: Capital G Gamers are idiots.
That's not the definition of censorship - by definition, the video game maker in that case chose to self-censor. It's debatable whether or not that was a stupid decision or a wise decision, but there's no other word to describe it.
Censorship can be self imposed, eg Hollywood.
And please don't throw ad hominem attacks at groups of people. Not only are you incorrect but it's childish.
:-)
Now we just need HN to follow suit.
There’s nothing wrong with editorializing comment sections. Not every comment section on the web needs to encourage voices from every side in the name of free speech.
I think websites perhaps should start to create “comment section covenant” that outline how subjects are handled. Ie
No ad hominem
No misinformation
No conspiracies
All comments failing will be deleted
Etc etc
Sarcasm aside, there is no man fit to play the censor. Real life is too complex to oblige by naive rules.
The comment section of a website is not real life. You don’t have “rights” here, you’re allowed to use the site according to its terms. The servers, this site are private property, and the owners get to set the rules.
So it’s not playing censor, it’s editorializing. You’re free to comment other places. I can and will choose sites that moderate voices that I don’t want to deal with.
You can say that, “we’ll, this will cause silos”, but this experiment of everyone making any comments they want and everyone having to listen is a failure. It has only further divided people because the internet comment section is not the place to convert and educate people, so people just get more entrenched. You’re unlikely to be swayed by this comment for example.
I for one am tired of it. I want comment sections that deal with people of a certain educational level, intelligence, and point of view. I don’t want to deal with incels, psychopaths, people without formal education etc.
If you think internet comments are a right and moderating them is censorship, then yes, I want your comments gone from the sites I want to use and where I go to have conversations with intelligent people.
Censorship can still happen on private property. That does not, per se, determine right or wrong. Nobody objects that kids websites don't allow pornography.
We can also still object to censorship, even if it's on private property. You don't have some a right to be immune to criticism.
What constitutes an echo chamber. Where is the line? If you don’t allow hate speech, is that an echo chamber? If you don’t allow misinformation, or lies, or conspiracy theories, is that echo chamber?
To me, avoiding those things is the basis of any positive communication.
Again, the alternative: “echo free”, all points of view are equal, actually does no one any good, because comments sections aren’t a place to share and be open to points of view. Unmoderated sites, and echo free almost always end up a place for people to harass others.
The internet is different than face to face. There are few to no consequences for bad behavior, and that includes spouting political, and religious ideology in settings and situations that no one wants it. If someone sat down at your table and started spouting some of the stuff that goes around comments, you’d be pretty upset.
So if I get to choose a table at a nice restaurant with nice courteous people, why can’t I choose the same on a website?
If I go to a science mag blog I don’t want anti science, anti vaccine, anti evolution conversations. Those are settled issues in my book.
Maybe to some people, that means I’m in an “echo chamber” but honestly to me it simply means my bar for conversations is much much higher. And if someone can’t meet it they’re not invited to my table.
And if a place of patronage allows anyone to come in and harass its customers, because “feee speech” and preventing “echo chambers” I go elsewhere.
I’ve spent to much time on HN for instance dealing with misinformation or as you put it “non truth based” and for me that means things that are not verifiable, non factual, based primarily in prejudice. I usually come to HN to read technology and science news, and have come to expect a level of discussion that includes a certain level of intelligence. However on many occasions I end up seeing comments hashing out the same old prejudiced political view points over and over. So my use of HN has dropped and will probably continue to drop. Mostly I scan comments rather than read most of them as I used to.
I’m sure at some point everyone will get tired of these echo free chambers because they are simply too draining. They lead to anger and angst when actually having to deal with other’s view points in the real world.
Echo free leads to more polarization, not less. The Facebook/Twitter era has more than proved that.
Edit: Another area I’m tired of dealing with in comments.l: moderation being called “censorship”. Censorship requires an authority that can prohibit behavior at a public level. Asking people to behave, act, or talk in specific ways is not “censorship”, especially when it’s done in a private sphere, as on a website’s comment section. You’re free to do or say things in your private space without my interference, but you don’t get to enforce that on my private space or a websites private space. Calling comment moderation “censorship” is so disconnected from the actual history of true censorship, it’s an insult to the word.
An open comment section is an open room. Each comment, and each commentor, is acting individually. There aren't really narratives because there's not enough cooperation to build one, if things are working well.
As a recent example, consider the lab leak theory for covid. This was perfectly credible to begin with, was parroted by some bad faith actors, deemed a conspiracy theory and actually censored and removed from several sites.. and now we have really good evidence to suggest it may have been the origin of covid.
In an echo chamber, you remove the truth. In an open room the truth can always exist, even if it's hidden.
Religion has nothing to do with it. You don’t need to enforce or end up with a single “religious narrative”. For example a comment section on a science mag under an article about particle physics doesn’t need to talk about religion at all. People of all walks of faith can talk openly. Not allowing others to harass people with a religious viewpoint is the basis of freedom of religion.
Your lab leak theory is a great example of this exact problem, because it’s full of misinformation, almost certainly learned from social media. Scientist don’t “rule out” or “censor” competing hypothesis. It just doesn’t work that way. If you have data that supports a lab leak, then you publish and people do further research. Only in the public social media talk did it take the form of “science and truth being censored” primarily due to the public’s poor understanding of how science functions.
> In an echo chamber, you remove the truth”
This just logically makes no sense. Let’s say by your definition an echo chamber forces out competing narratives. If it forces out the narrative that the earth is flat, it in no way has removed the truth. By your definition I’ve created an echo chamber that only “believes” in a non flat earth, and yet truth remains.
If I delete certain comments from my blog, that is censoring.
Definitions of words are complex since they mean different things under different contexts.
As we’ve been using it, I believe, censorship involves some type of authority censoring those without power’s voice, whether that’s a citizen of an oppressive country, or a user of a website beholden to the authority if it’s owners.
In the broadest sense, then yes, any content that is suppressed falls under censorship, in which case nearly all content we consume is censored. Truly objectionable material such as horrible graphic violent and/or sexual material is censored across almost all venues.
In practice, this is usually not referred to as censorship, and I think it would take some sophistry to assume the parent is implying all suppression of any kind is “censorship”.
Instead the context I understand we are talking about is in line with religious, political censorship etc, where there is a motive to impose moral values, or hide facts from the public.
So while you could define censorship as any suppression whatsoever, context matters. And when the context involves the parent talking about “free speech rights being censored” then the historical aspect and that context is what should be considered.
In that context, calling moderation of internet comments “censorship of free speech” is both horribly uninformed of historical examples of true censorship of free speech, and also a false dichotomy (either we have 100% free speech or horrible censorship).
But does this strike anyone as specifically anti-science? If science is a process that's continually open to revision and re-examination, it seems like claiming a right to ban wrongthink goes directly against that part of the philosophy. What good is it to claim to be evidence-based if you also claim the ability to censor evidence that you've decided, a priori, that doesn't fit your desired narrative?
I mean it's one thing to allow political discussions to be moderated but it seems like science claims a particular philosophy that must be open to challenge, right?
Honestly, I'm curious what you think a solution might be that would respect this basic fact of argumentation.
If they're looking to argue science, They can start their own blog.
They aren't being censored or silenced. They're just being removed from a personal blog.
I mean, I’m exaggerating, but only a bit. Have you seen the sort of comments this sort of thing gets?
I think the lack of that distinction is one of the nuances missing from much online communication these days. With bad faith comments, I try to downvote and move on, but any comment made in good faith, even and especially when I don't agree, is a good thing.
Absolutely, but your main point is moot. When you're wrong, sometimes you're just wrong. Science is not supposed to accommodate bad ideas, and the arbiters of science are people. Usually, very smart and discerning people.
When you delete stupid things that don't make sense, it's called tidying up, not censoring. People just have a hard time accepting that their ideas objectively suck, and that really shouldn't be surprising.
What is different is the nature of the blog, which is focused on medicine. This seems to make the alternative views on the issues kind of harmful to the society. And the author has more reason to ban them. But honestly, I don't believe any doctor in the U.S. comes to the comments section to get prescription advices.
The best trolls are the ones who are playing true believers.
I think the best trolls are true believers who know how to not take their own views seriously. This gives them the ability to not only screw with you but also at various points make actual real points about things. The mixing and matching of reality, perceived or real, with content designed to anger and upset makes for a recipe for anger and annoyance.
(1) are the people whose free speech is impaired by relentless toxic comments
(2) are the posters themselves who will be increasingly isolated by their behavior and feeling persecuted. It is like the cult member who is driven into evangelism not to recruit new members but to become convinced that the outside world is corrupt.
These will become increasingly radicalized and over the next few years will be recruited into more violent attacks and other forms of exploitation such as spending their income on scam alt-health supplements.
The most difficult problem in all of this is the the type (2) victims and many observers will insist that their disingenuous communications be taken at face value which is absolutely exhausting for the the type (1) victims who really ought so say that we don't want to hear about their dog pills.
So to lament how one can’t get only good comments, which disagree with your views only when your views are wrong, and then write long essays about how certain people will not comment the way you want them to, doesn’t seem very practical.
I’ve been reading troll comments, and many non troll but equally destructive and yet clearly well intentioned comments, for decades and that won’t change as long as the internet is free. Accept that freedom or don’t try to profit from it in the first place. Write books instead of blogs.